Education funding faces a test as money is targeted in the ongoing budget debates. |
AP Photo
Close

“Most folks in the education community are hoping for level funding in 2012,” said Diane Stark Rentner, director of national programs for the Center on Education Policy. “They did a good job of protecting education in the last round of negotiations, but if they’re reading the reports about what’s going on in states and realizing that one of their largest expenditures is in education, they realize that they’ve got to take that into consideration.”

Even with its push to beef up the country’s education system to produce more “college and career-ready” students, the Obama administration has presciently geared its policy proposals to do more with less.

Text Size

-

+

reset

The administration has aggressively pushed to export a competitive funding model based on the success of Race to the Top to other areas of the Education Department’s budget.

That push, however, has worried some education advocates who fear any savings or gains that emerge from ongoing budget negotiations would be more heavily skewed toward the competitive model favored by Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

“If you look at what happened in the CR, pretty much every increase went to competitive programs: Race to the Top, innovation in education.” Packer said. The Title I program that distributes education funds to more low-income schools in nearly every district in the country by a formula was “frozen,” Packer added.

“We were happy to see the commitment to education in a very tough environment,” said Mary Kusler, manager of federal advocacy for the National Education Association. “We would have rather seen more additional dollars go to Title I and [the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] than were slated to go for those programs.”

In its full context, Obama’s education budget for the 2012 fiscal year proposes policy and funding changes to a wide range of programs, including a sizable increase in special education, science and technology and adult education. But few analysts expect next year’s funding levels to remotely resemble Obama’s ambitious 2012 budget blueprint, which was already soundly rejected last month by the Senate.

Republican negotiators have publicly expressed a desire to use savings identified in the student loan program for broader deficit reduction instead of redirecting those funds to shore up the Pell Grant program as the Obama administration has proposed. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the savings at more than $8 billion over five years.

The Pell Grant program, which has ballooned in size in the past five years, now comprises nearly half of the entire Education Department’s budget. The stimulus bill increase injected billions of dollars to raise the maximum grant from about $4,800 to $5,550, while the combination of eligibility adjustments and the economic downturn increased the number of students eligible for grants.

The debate over how to pay for the popular, politically visible program has raised fears that its demands on the federal budget might crowd out substantive increases for the bulk of other education programs under the department.

“The Pell Grant program is effectively eating other programs’ lunch,” Delisle said. “The budget for the Pell Grant program has more than doubled if you count this onetime funding that keeps being thrown at the program, and the rest of the programs have really not increased.”

Just last week, Vice President Joe Biden’s staff reassured education advocates that the administration is still working to protect education funds in the budget negotiations with Republicans — even as pressure mounts to take large entitlement programs off the table, leaving fewer places in the budget for cuts.

“Whatever the final deal ends up being, we are holding out hope that education fares better in those discussions,” Kusler said. “But given the overall economic climate, nothing is a safe bet at this point.”

Readers' Comments (20)

Dept of ED needs to go. Education is a local matter. Labor ?why should they receive preferential treatment to those who provide their livelihood ? Anmd health ? Another area uncovered as an enumerated power of the federsal government.

Just what republicans want. Has everyone noticed that republicans want to privatize or de-regulate anything that is considered a must have. Medicare, prison. education, Clean air is next, they will find a way to charge us to breath before long. Wakeup America, can you see what the rich and the GOP is doing to us.

Actually its not even half of what democrats want. Any one with any brains recognises that

if we keep spending the way democrats want half of our taxes will be going to interest pay-

ments and we wil be cutting programs by at least 1/2. So instead of facing reality the dem-

Nobody remembers the book called THE BELL CURVE written in the 50s. You cannot buy Intelligence or IQ. They are directly related to ones DNA and you either have it or you don't. Kids need to be separated by IQ and let the best rise to the top instead of trying to dumb them down and make them equal to the lowest common denominator

Private school vouchers are the way to go. Public schooling under the guise of the failed teacher's union has destroyed the hopes and dreams of millions of poor children throughout the years. DEMOLIBs are the culprits without a doubt.

The stimulus bill increase injected billions of dollars to raise the maximum grant from about $4,800 to $5,550, while the combination of eligibility adjustments and the economic downturn increased the number of students eligible for grants.

Oh but of course, lets eliminate the department of education! Then we can start celebrating McCarthy's birthday for being the biggest hero America ever knew! Al Qiada are a bunch of muslim commies, and they want you to have universal healthcare...of death panels. And don't forget Jesus day! Because if you don't worship the evangelical version of Jesus, you're a communist and should be put in prison. This is what you will get. Red state morons deciding that teaching scientific theory is against the bible, and so doing away with it and replacing it with creationism.

Our education system may be a joke (frankly I blame the economy geared to having both parents working instead of one being home to raise children) but at least it makes a friggin attempt to teach proper math and science. Leaving things to "local" levels will breed more and more ludicrous curriculums until the american worker's education is worthless in the global economy.

Changing the teachers Cadillac benefits would pay for most of the missing money. In addition there are some really outrageous costly rules for kids with problems (as it happens in some states/districts). We really have to learn that even education needs a ROI. We cannot have a special Ed teacher for every single kid in a class (even though in some cases it may be helpful), some parents actually believe nowadays that it is the schools "responsibility" to feed the kids and so on. We just went too far and have to scale back ..... even education ....

we can only afford education we can pay for ... sorry, but that is reality1